Oak Ridge baseball team sees season end in Class 1 sectionals

~ The Blue Jays dropped a 9-2 decision in the Class 1 sectionals Tuesday

CHAFFEE, Mo. -- Whether his team has won or lost, Oak Ridge senior Brett Thomas is honest about how he and his team played.

And honestly, the Oak Ridge baseball team wasn't nearly good enough to beat Naylor on Tuesday.

"I don't think we came ready to play," Thomas said. "I don't know. They just beat us. Plain and simple.

"They outhit us, out-fielded us, outpitched us. They did everything, so we just got beat today. That's all you can say. They beat us in every aspect of the game."

Naylor defeated the Blue Jays 9-2 in a Class 1 sectional. It was a final score that could have been much closer -- or much worse.

Oak Ridge committed four errors, issued nine walks and hit two batters to aid a Naylor offense that also got eight singles, but the Eagles left 12 runners on base.

"We always talk about doing the little things right, and today we didn't do it, didn't play defense," Oak Ridge coach Patrick Friga said. "We looked like we weren't ready to play even though we was here at 1 o'clock."

The game, which Oak Ridge was scheduled to host, was played at Chaffee because rain left the Blue Jays' field unplayable.

Naylor scored twice in the top of the first inning off freshman starter Kelby Brown before adding another run in the second.

"I guess it was kind of just the first-inning jitters," said Brown, who walked and hit a batter in the first inning while also giving up three hits. "It was a big game. I'm just a freshman, so just coming out there you know it's a big game and you know that you have a big job to do."

Brown then was replaced by Thomas with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the third inning.

The senior struck out the next batter, but Naylor added two more runs when Brown overthrew first base after a ball was grounded to him at shortstop to give Naylor a 5-0 lead.

"I was telling them we've got to talk," Friga said. "Instead of Kelby throwing the ball across, [second baseman] Andrew [Puchbauer] should've said, 'Hey, right here.' It's just little things."

While the plays didn't always go down as errors, Naylor took advantage of Oak Ridge's defense throughout the game. The Eagles routinely advanced an extra base on hits and took another five bases on stolen bases or wild pitches.

"They were aggressive," Thomas said. "We heard they were aggressive, and they were as aggressive as advertised. They ran wildly and it kind of worked for them. I don't know why we let them, but we did."

Naylor added three runs on two hits in the sixth inning and scored its final run when Thomas hit a batter with the bases loaded in the seventh.

The Oak Ridge offense was silenced in its season-ending loss for a third consecutive season. The Blue Jays got one hit in a state quarterfinal loss to Cooter two years ago. They got two hits in a shutout loss to the same team last year.

Naylor ace Dalton Woodard allowed just one hit Tuesday. Senior Lucas Rohde got a two-run single with two outs in the fourth inning to score Jacob Light and Thomas, who had reached on an error and a walk, respectively.

"He hit his spots," Friga said. "We just didn't take advantage. We'd have a 2-0 pitch and we'd take a strike right down the middle. We've got to be more aggressive than we were. When we hit the ball, it was right at them."

It partly was because the Blue Jays had been to the quarterfinals -- just one win away from the final four -- the last two seasons that they chose not to start Thomas, who had an 8-0 record and 0.58 ERA entering the game against Naylor.

"We all talked about it," Friga said. "I talked to Brett about it, talked to Kelby about it. We've won the sectional game before, and we wanted to win the quarterfinal game."

Thomas said he wasn't surprised that Naylor, which won its district for the first time since 1998, made the opposite decision.

"We wanted the best chance we could get to make it to the final four and that was starting Kelby," Thomas said. "They've never been here before. They're obviously going to go out and throw their stud to try to win the ballgame. That's what they did, and we gambled and we got burned.

"That's what you've got to live with. We made a decision and it beat us, and you've just got to live with it."

Oak Ridge finished the season with a 17-5 record and a third consecutive district title, something that it never had done before.

"It's all over," said Thomas, who will pitch at Missouri next season. "It's going to sink in. It hasn't. It's going to be different taking off the Oak Ridge jersey for the last time for sure. Mizzou, I might change the number and change the name on the front of the jersey, but it all came from Oak Ridge.

"It all started here, and it's probably going to end here. This is where I made my baseball career happen."

Naylor 212 003 1 -- 9 8 1

Oak Ridge 000 200 0 -- 2 1 4

WP -- Dalton Woodard. LP -- Kelby Brown. Multiple hits -- Naylor: Marcus Rigdon 3-5, Aaron Graham 2-4. Records -- Naylor 16-4, Oak Ridge 17-5.